Chemical Engineering January 2012 - 45

must be able to overcome both of these
natural reflexes in order to analyze
the situation and determine the best
course of action. The outcome must be
a decision or action plan.
Keeping the mentioned rules in
mind, the smart project manager
communicates the bad news to the
team and the clients as soon as possible.
The number of details disseminated
may be limited with an
explanation of the justifiable need
for business secrecy, but it is important
to stick to the truth. This communication
should include the action
plan needed to manage the impact
of whatever is not right, or if that is
not immediately available, include a
promise issue date.
By being the messenger, the project
manager is able to control the
message and avoid the damage from
rampant misinformed gossip, which
serves to undermine the precious
culture of trust and respect that was
carefully nurtured.
Communicate
My mother used to say, " If I have told
you once, I have told you a thousand
times! " The message was then reinforced
with a slap to the back of the
head. Okay, now I have got it. Maybe
my mother read the survey that shows
that our information absorption is
somewhere less than 20% of what was
transmitted. So at the risk of sounding
repetitious, the smart project manager
should say it again and again. But in
order to limit the number of people
falling out of their chairs while asleep
(a safety hazard), the message may be
put into a different format each time.
So put up that safety banner, talk
about it in the monthly project meeting,
hold a safety award meeting, remind
the team about working safely
before they head out to the plant or
drive home, and give the team a free
safety lunch where you remind them
about the job safety bonus. It is all the
same message repeated over and over.
Manage what you know
It is hard for top performers like project
managers to acknowledge that they
do not know everything that they are
trying manage. But this is something
that cannot be hidden from the project
team. Any attempt to gloss over this
would only highlight the dishonesty
of the situation and lead to weakening
of the good culture. Instead, the
project manager must assign qualified
subordinates who can take over the
task of managing those aspects where
the project manager is not strong. At
large engineering and construction
firms, there is typically a position of
" project engineering manager " that
has the responsibility for the technical
integrity of the design. But even
here, it is unrealistic to believe that
a chemical engineer by training has
sufficient knowledge to oversee the
details of electrical design. So it is
smart to make more than one senior
level assignment to assist the project
manager in those areas that need additional
knowledge.
By delegating parts of the project
management to qualified individuals,
the project manager has more time to
focus on what he or she knows, and
the flexibility to manage the greater
issues of the overall project direction
and client relationship. The individual
project team member also has greater
access to the technical decision maker
and so can minimize the delays associated
with waiting for a decision.
Finish the job
The successful completion of a project
means taking care of all the small
details and pieces of information
that were generated over a course of
months. They must be collated, filed
and transmitted to the end user. Unfortunately,
the deluge of information
invariably comes amid the chaotic destaffing
of the discipline that generated
it. For the project manager, the
delivery of the information is a critical
part of the project contract - so it
must be done in an orderly and timely
fashion.
The key to the success of this final
phase of the project is to have a closure
plan in place and the personnel
responsible for the execution of that
plan should be assigned from the beginning
of the project. By identifying
specific items that go into the " job
books " or any other transmittal early
on, and having the specific personnel
committed to the task of assembly, it
can be carried out throughout the life
of the project. The last minute scramble
for information should not be left
to the last clerk on the project.
Stay connected to the business
Ask what are the most important aspects
of project management, and the
answer will be safety, cost and schedule.
And so indeed, those are the correct
answers if the only concern is to
manage the everyday grind of detail
design and installation. However, for
a project to succeed, the project manager
must make sure that the project
satisfies the basic business objective.
In several extreme cases, more than
one major international company has
seen projects to successful completion
only to discover that the market no
longer needed its products. The lack
of a clear connection to the business
objective resulted in the unnecessary
expenditure of scarce capital. While
the retrenchment or even complete
shutdown of a project is a drastic measure,
it must nonetheless remain on
the table as part of the risk-to-reward
calculation.
Conversely, it is also important that
if market conditions dictate, the project
manager must be ready to redirect the
project so that the company is able to
take advantage of the new economics.
In the case of a gas processing company,
a pipeline project that was conceived to
transport products from one region to
another was completely revamped to
be able to reverse the flow direction
during certain times of the year. The
original project schedule was still met
with the revision of the project execution
plan, which included the judicious
addition of resources and contribution
of the project team working above expectations
to accomplish the goal. ■
Edited by Dorothy Lozowski
Author
Alfred Chiu is a project manager
with S & B Engineers
and Constructors Ltd. (7825
Park Place Blvd. Houston, TX
77087; Phone: 713-845-4156;
Email: achiu@sbec.com). Chiu
is a registered professional
engineer in the state of Texas.
He received his B.E.Ch.E. degree
from the City College of
New York, and an executive
M.B.A. degree from the University
of Houston. Chiu has 33 years of experience
in petroleum refining, chemicals and water
processing. Before joining S & B, he worked for
Union Carbide Corp., Lummus Co. and Stone
and Webster Engineering Corp.
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM JANUARY 2012 43
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